Real estate prices for burials far from dying down

The New York City inventory squeeze is extending about six feet under. Like all other real estate in New York, the price of burial plots have skyrocketed. Manhattan burial space has all but vanished, while Brooklyn prices have reached record levels.

“At the end of the day, it’s like any other piece of real estate,” Amy Cunningham, a funeral director in New York, told Bloomberg. “Prices have conspired to put burials out of the range of most people’s budgets.”

The price of a 756-square-foot mausoleum site in Green-Wood Cemetery, located at 500 25th Street in Park Slope, is roughly $320,000. An 1,800-square-foot single-family home across the street, meanwhile, sold for $245,000 in 2009.

Ed Koch, the late former mayor, is one of the few residents in recent years to actually be buried in Manhattan. Five years before dying, Koch paid $20,000 to the Trinity Church Cemetery. [Bloomberg News] — Mark Maurer